AUSTEN, Jane.
Pride and Prejudice
★★★★★ (I suppose)
What dare I say about this well-loved classic?
To be honest … I struggled with it, had to persist to read through to the end.
And why did I decide to read it in the first place? Well, there’s a chance I might take in Pride and Prejudice on stage this spring. What better preparation than to read the original novel? And thus, I venture into an era of literature I hadn’t explored before.
To my naïve surprise, in 200 years since Pride and Prejudice was written the meanings and use specific words are different and the manner in which thoughts are structured and characters are portrayed has changed. Gradually, with the reading I adapted to the nature of the writing, learned to decode the thoughts of the main character, appreciated the dramatic tensions and intricacies of relationship depicted.
Let me hazard a quick synopsis. We enter a non-working class family (there is probably a better word for that) of five daughters at a time when the three oldest are soon to marry. While of independent means, the wealth of this family is somewhat precarious and the advantageous marriages of these daughters is particularly important for its viability. Interested suitors emerge in this world of politeness and polished civility, personalities clash, and the family navigates this critical period.
We follow the drama through the eyes and thoughts of one of the daughters, the somewhat outspoken and independent minded, Elizabeth. Circling about her comes the enigmatic Mr. Darcy. Misunderstandings of character arise and wind into their complications.
I suspect that Pride and Prejudice has served as a template for how romance and coupling comes to be storied right up into our current time. It seems quaintly at odds with our swipe-left, swipe-right culture of modern dating apps, although both then and now physical attractiveness and observable personality capture the heart. And also, perhaps this novel from 200 years ago changed the way authors write about things, dipping into the treachery of characters, the treachery of one’s own thoughts too.
And if I get to see it acted out on stage … well, I guess I now know who is who and what is what.
To be honest … I struggled with it, had to persist to read through to the end.
And why did I decide to read it in the first place? Well, there’s a chance I might take in Pride and Prejudice on stage this spring. What better preparation than to read the original novel? And thus, I venture into an era of literature I hadn’t explored before.
To my naïve surprise, in 200 years since Pride and Prejudice was written the meanings and use specific words are different and the manner in which thoughts are structured and characters are portrayed has changed. Gradually, with the reading I adapted to the nature of the writing, learned to decode the thoughts of the main character, appreciated the dramatic tensions and intricacies of relationship depicted.
Let me hazard a quick synopsis. We enter a non-working class family (there is probably a better word for that) of five daughters at a time when the three oldest are soon to marry. While of independent means, the wealth of this family is somewhat precarious and the advantageous marriages of these daughters is particularly important for its viability. Interested suitors emerge in this world of politeness and polished civility, personalities clash, and the family navigates this critical period.
We follow the drama through the eyes and thoughts of one of the daughters, the somewhat outspoken and independent minded, Elizabeth. Circling about her comes the enigmatic Mr. Darcy. Misunderstandings of character arise and wind into their complications.
I suspect that Pride and Prejudice has served as a template for how romance and coupling comes to be storied right up into our current time. It seems quaintly at odds with our swipe-left, swipe-right culture of modern dating apps, although both then and now physical attractiveness and observable personality capture the heart. And also, perhaps this novel from 200 years ago changed the way authors write about things, dipping into the treachery of characters, the treachery of one’s own thoughts too.
And if I get to see it acted out on stage … well, I guess I now know who is who and what is what.
BERNSTEIN, Sarah
Study for Obedience
★★★★☆
As I work of literary fiction, told through stream of consciousness narration, Study for Obedience embeds the reader into another person’s mind.
As one such reader, I’m not at all sure it is where I would’ve chosen to be. And, upon completion of the read, I’m not at all sure where I’ve ending up having been there.
Let me hazard a synopsis of the storyline.
The person of the mind whom we inhabit is called by her brother to come and live with him, basically to be his housemaid and personal caretaker. He had taken up residence in the northern land of their ancestors. The locals speak a language which she doesn’t understand and thus our character is unable to communicate with them. These local folk are a rather superstitious lot and suspect this incomer as being the cause of a sequence of adverse happenings. They want nothing to do with her.
In an attempt to offer a gift to the townsfolk, our character fashions a craft and leaves her creations at the homes and businesses. She eventually finds those objects of attempted connection have been collected and buried as if they had been a hex she had placed upon the members of the community.
Her brother is no help. He makes his living elsewhere so he is either gone, leaving her to maintain his home, or expects her to serve his needs and sustain him when he’s back. He is dominant in their relationship and she is engaged in her lot of serving him, her study for obedience. Eventually the brother succumbs to a mysterious illness more intensely requiring our character’s care and attention.
The character whose mind we inhabit is a dutiful soul, consistently endeavouring to do the right thing, diligently. She is that sort. Before she moved from the city, she had worked as a legal dicta-typist but as she is caught up in this impossible living arrangement she is unable to continue her job as a distance worker. As she completes her mundane tasks, she is left to walk the moors, seeking solace there. Where her mind takes her on that walk suggests psychosis has set in.
By the end of the book we are left wondering if we too have, with her, completely succumbed to the madness of it all, or if by some flash of possibility, she, and we, might be able to break free.
As one such reader, I’m not at all sure it is where I would’ve chosen to be. And, upon completion of the read, I’m not at all sure where I’ve ending up having been there.
Let me hazard a synopsis of the storyline.
The person of the mind whom we inhabit is called by her brother to come and live with him, basically to be his housemaid and personal caretaker. He had taken up residence in the northern land of their ancestors. The locals speak a language which she doesn’t understand and thus our character is unable to communicate with them. These local folk are a rather superstitious lot and suspect this incomer as being the cause of a sequence of adverse happenings. They want nothing to do with her.
In an attempt to offer a gift to the townsfolk, our character fashions a craft and leaves her creations at the homes and businesses. She eventually finds those objects of attempted connection have been collected and buried as if they had been a hex she had placed upon the members of the community.
Her brother is no help. He makes his living elsewhere so he is either gone, leaving her to maintain his home, or expects her to serve his needs and sustain him when he’s back. He is dominant in their relationship and she is engaged in her lot of serving him, her study for obedience. Eventually the brother succumbs to a mysterious illness more intensely requiring our character’s care and attention.
The character whose mind we inhabit is a dutiful soul, consistently endeavouring to do the right thing, diligently. She is that sort. Before she moved from the city, she had worked as a legal dicta-typist but as she is caught up in this impossible living arrangement she is unable to continue her job as a distance worker. As she completes her mundane tasks, she is left to walk the moors, seeking solace there. Where her mind takes her on that walk suggests psychosis has set in.
By the end of the book we are left wondering if we too have, with her, completely succumbed to the madness of it all, or if by some flash of possibility, she, and we, might be able to break free.
CHILVERS, Anna.
East Coast Road
★★★★★
I did a mulligan on this one, had to.
I have a friend who reads in parallel with me. We talk about the books we read as we go. He casually mentioned the book was in the genre of magic realism.
Hunh?
I’d never heard the term before. And certainly, I’d never read in that genre. So, I looked it up. Armed with that new perspective and equipped with the clues provided in final chapters, I went back to re-read the novel. Then East Coast Road then opened up its magic for me.
This story takes us out into the liminal space of the recently dead, the very-old-but-still-remembered-dead, the could-very-well-become-dead-soon, and the still-alive. It takes these characters on a journey on the east coast of England. Past and present are interwoven.
Nineteen-year-old Jen carries us through the story. She has been gifted throughout her life in being able to perceive into that liminal space. Prior to being plunged into a coma where she sinks fully into that space, she is perplexed by her gift and the awareness it creates. Confiding one such experience to a university chum in the initial chapter, she is advised that perhaps she needs to talk to somebody about it, get professional help. (Smile emoji 😉).
But that’s not all that’s in this novel. Of course, there’s a love story in there too. A couple of them, actually … the main character is of that age. And there's the facing of one’s fear. There’s also a coming to terms with the frailty of the human body, pushing oneself to the limits.
And there’s another theme, a slow burner that I realized only in retrospect. A contrast is drawn between modern day Christianity in its born again formulation, and the ecstatic engagement with the mystical of Christianity’s medieval times. Both of these iterations of the Christian faith share something in common: in both, religious devotion blocks the capacity for entering loving, emotionally intimate, responsible relationship with others. Hmm .…
This book reminds me that fiction is an amazing thing: it takes us subjectively to places we’ve never gone before. I’ve never experienced that liminal space that Jen so readily slips into but am called to try to puzzle it all through in this interesting travelogue / love story.
And so, I’ve made my first steps into this different genre with East Coast Road, a well-crafted story that opens me up to a whole new experience of reading.
I have a friend who reads in parallel with me. We talk about the books we read as we go. He casually mentioned the book was in the genre of magic realism.
Hunh?
I’d never heard the term before. And certainly, I’d never read in that genre. So, I looked it up. Armed with that new perspective and equipped with the clues provided in final chapters, I went back to re-read the novel. Then East Coast Road then opened up its magic for me.
This story takes us out into the liminal space of the recently dead, the very-old-but-still-remembered-dead, the could-very-well-become-dead-soon, and the still-alive. It takes these characters on a journey on the east coast of England. Past and present are interwoven.
Nineteen-year-old Jen carries us through the story. She has been gifted throughout her life in being able to perceive into that liminal space. Prior to being plunged into a coma where she sinks fully into that space, she is perplexed by her gift and the awareness it creates. Confiding one such experience to a university chum in the initial chapter, she is advised that perhaps she needs to talk to somebody about it, get professional help. (Smile emoji 😉).
But that’s not all that’s in this novel. Of course, there’s a love story in there too. A couple of them, actually … the main character is of that age. And there's the facing of one’s fear. There’s also a coming to terms with the frailty of the human body, pushing oneself to the limits.
And there’s another theme, a slow burner that I realized only in retrospect. A contrast is drawn between modern day Christianity in its born again formulation, and the ecstatic engagement with the mystical of Christianity’s medieval times. Both of these iterations of the Christian faith share something in common: in both, religious devotion blocks the capacity for entering loving, emotionally intimate, responsible relationship with others. Hmm .…
This book reminds me that fiction is an amazing thing: it takes us subjectively to places we’ve never gone before. I’ve never experienced that liminal space that Jen so readily slips into but am called to try to puzzle it all through in this interesting travelogue / love story.
And so, I’ve made my first steps into this different genre with East Coast Road, a well-crafted story that opens me up to a whole new experience of reading.
CINNAMON, Bruce
The Melting Queen
★★★★☆
The city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada monikers itself as The Festival City. And indeed, it has quite a few Festivals from the Street Performers, to its multinational Heritage, to Fringe theatre. Then there are the music Festivals -- Jazz, Folk and Blues.
Oh, two other things about Edmonton. It has long winters and a wide river running through it. Through the long winter that wide river freezes over. But on a particular day in spring the river breaks up, the water starts to run free.
Sounds like the perfect occasion for yet another festival, right?
That festival and its traditions are celebrated in the dark but magical tale The Melting Queen. The timing of Melting Day festivity bounces around on the calendar, thanks to the unpredicatable thaw of winter. But on that day Edmontonians are only too happy to drop everything they’re doing to have a celebration. In that celebration a Melting Queen is selected in the draw of name from hundreds nominated by other Edmontonians. She reigns for the next year, inspiring projects to make Edmonton a better place and to be a comforting Mother Confessor to miserable Edmontonians.
In the 115th iteration of this tradition, the name of a genderfluid person is drawn: River Runson, previously, and that quite recently, known as Adam Truman. They are (or should I write she is) reluctant to the role.
I mentioned the story is both dark and magical. One of the unfortunate gifts bestowed on the Melting Queen is access to the memories of all previous Melting Queens. These come in the form of vivid, disorienting intrusions and the hold a very dark element from the past. Not all is at it is celebrated to be.
The novel is animated with peculiar characters replete with their gifts and flaws. It is a bit of a moral tale as much as a fantastical one.
Oh, two other things about Edmonton. It has long winters and a wide river running through it. Through the long winter that wide river freezes over. But on a particular day in spring the river breaks up, the water starts to run free.
Sounds like the perfect occasion for yet another festival, right?
That festival and its traditions are celebrated in the dark but magical tale The Melting Queen. The timing of Melting Day festivity bounces around on the calendar, thanks to the unpredicatable thaw of winter. But on that day Edmontonians are only too happy to drop everything they’re doing to have a celebration. In that celebration a Melting Queen is selected in the draw of name from hundreds nominated by other Edmontonians. She reigns for the next year, inspiring projects to make Edmonton a better place and to be a comforting Mother Confessor to miserable Edmontonians.
In the 115th iteration of this tradition, the name of a genderfluid person is drawn: River Runson, previously, and that quite recently, known as Adam Truman. They are (or should I write she is) reluctant to the role.
I mentioned the story is both dark and magical. One of the unfortunate gifts bestowed on the Melting Queen is access to the memories of all previous Melting Queens. These come in the form of vivid, disorienting intrusions and the hold a very dark element from the past. Not all is at it is celebrated to be.
The novel is animated with peculiar characters replete with their gifts and flaws. It is a bit of a moral tale as much as a fantastical one.
COELHO, Paulo.
The Alchemist
★★★★☆
From what I can tell by its fame and reviews, The Alchemist is well loved. Cherished, even. For some it is read over and over again.
This reading is my third, each subsequent dip into this allegorical novel has been separated by about a decade of my life. As I pull it forward on my Kindle, I find highlights I’ve made before -- pithy little every-day wisdoms, sprinkled throughout the text.
And yet, on this reading I’m again left by that nagging question of whether or not I truly got it.
So, by way of quite synopsis... this is a story of boy in his teen years who takes what education he got in a local seminary along with a bit of finances his dad had set aside for him, and goes off to pursue his own personal destiny. The story takes him from the pastures of Spain where he cares for sheep he bought with the money from his dad, to Morocco and eventually across the north Sahara Desert to the foot of the pyramids in Egypt.
Along the way he meets a number of interesting characters, several of which have a mystical or magical qualities—a gypsy, an apparition of long dead king, an alchemist. He gains wealth and then loses it. He finds love and then leaves it behind. Throughout the journey he is driven by his own quest for what his life can mean, what is his own personal legend being written through the adventures and misadventures he has.
And in the end, well … you will have to get there yourself.
The read is a bit like the read. We wander through the succession of events much like our protagonist does, perplexed and insecure, but moving forward until it ends. The tale is a bit hallucinatory, like the syncopated non-sequiturs of a nighttime dream.
Perhaps I’ll be drawn back to this book again, a decade from now, and really get it then.
This reading is my third, each subsequent dip into this allegorical novel has been separated by about a decade of my life. As I pull it forward on my Kindle, I find highlights I’ve made before -- pithy little every-day wisdoms, sprinkled throughout the text.
And yet, on this reading I’m again left by that nagging question of whether or not I truly got it.
So, by way of quite synopsis... this is a story of boy in his teen years who takes what education he got in a local seminary along with a bit of finances his dad had set aside for him, and goes off to pursue his own personal destiny. The story takes him from the pastures of Spain where he cares for sheep he bought with the money from his dad, to Morocco and eventually across the north Sahara Desert to the foot of the pyramids in Egypt.
Along the way he meets a number of interesting characters, several of which have a mystical or magical qualities—a gypsy, an apparition of long dead king, an alchemist. He gains wealth and then loses it. He finds love and then leaves it behind. Throughout the journey he is driven by his own quest for what his life can mean, what is his own personal legend being written through the adventures and misadventures he has.
And in the end, well … you will have to get there yourself.
The read is a bit like the read. We wander through the succession of events much like our protagonist does, perplexed and insecure, but moving forward until it ends. The tale is a bit hallucinatory, like the syncopated non-sequiturs of a nighttime dream.
Perhaps I’ll be drawn back to this book again, a decade from now, and really get it then.
DOSTOEVSKY, Fyodor
The Gambler
★★★★★
There is a common advice given to aspiring writers: write what you know.
Perhaps. But I don’t think this was the case for The Gambler.
I suspect that Dostoyevsky wrote this sordid tale when he was still trying to figure something out.
If one writes what one knows, the writing can be full of hubris and an already closed-off mind. If an author writes what is still being figured out, the writing can be full of existential dilemma and emergence.
So the story is about a young man who is stuck on a rollercoaster of compulsive gambling, trying to figure out how to keep his winnings going. He fully believed there was a winning system to be found at the Roulette table. Unfortunately, his winnings eventually lead to catastrophic losses, devastating ones which lead to destitution and even to a debtor’s prison. Others around him come and go in relationship but in the end he is left essentially alone. The gambling looms as a barrier to real relationship between them. If they lend money, it is only a small amount given his tendency to gamble it away.
I confess, I was curious. So I googled and Wikipedia-ed. The novel was written in 1864. Dostoevsky himself gambled compulsively between 1863 until he finally gave it up completely in 1871. Yes, when he wrote the novel he still believed he could find that system, was himself riding that rollercoaster of facile winnings and devastating losses. He was still trying to figure things out. He writes what being in the midst of it is like, not yet having it figured out how he might deal with it.
What Dostoevsky had no need of figuring out is how to collide fascinating characters into hopeless dilemmas of human relationship. There is a lot of that in The Gambler. That and also the subjective experience of a pathological compulsion. Those aspects of story-telling he has down pat.
I had the privilege as a psychologist to work with those facing problem gambling. Not much has changed from 19th Century Russia about the human side of things.
This book is not a gamble in terms of a good read. It is a sure bet.
Perhaps. But I don’t think this was the case for The Gambler.
I suspect that Dostoyevsky wrote this sordid tale when he was still trying to figure something out.
If one writes what one knows, the writing can be full of hubris and an already closed-off mind. If an author writes what is still being figured out, the writing can be full of existential dilemma and emergence.
So the story is about a young man who is stuck on a rollercoaster of compulsive gambling, trying to figure out how to keep his winnings going. He fully believed there was a winning system to be found at the Roulette table. Unfortunately, his winnings eventually lead to catastrophic losses, devastating ones which lead to destitution and even to a debtor’s prison. Others around him come and go in relationship but in the end he is left essentially alone. The gambling looms as a barrier to real relationship between them. If they lend money, it is only a small amount given his tendency to gamble it away.
I confess, I was curious. So I googled and Wikipedia-ed. The novel was written in 1864. Dostoevsky himself gambled compulsively between 1863 until he finally gave it up completely in 1871. Yes, when he wrote the novel he still believed he could find that system, was himself riding that rollercoaster of facile winnings and devastating losses. He was still trying to figure things out. He writes what being in the midst of it is like, not yet having it figured out how he might deal with it.
What Dostoevsky had no need of figuring out is how to collide fascinating characters into hopeless dilemmas of human relationship. There is a lot of that in The Gambler. That and also the subjective experience of a pathological compulsion. Those aspects of story-telling he has down pat.
I had the privilege as a psychologist to work with those facing problem gambling. Not much has changed from 19th Century Russia about the human side of things.
This book is not a gamble in terms of a good read. It is a sure bet.
ISHIGURO, Kazuo.
The Remains of the day
★★★★★
There’s something to be said for being the right reader, of the right novel, at the right time.
It doesn’t often happen.
I had no idea such would be for me with The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. After all, it was about a butler.
I found myself thankful I’d watched all the seasons of Downton Abbey before reading this book. It made the imagining easy, not quite so distant. How iconic that setting of Highclere Castle is, and how the characters and plot elements of The Remains of the Day slide in there.
But that’s not the space this novel asks us to occupy. We’re called to an interior space, a space of memory and musings, of trying to put one’s mental finger on something.
And that’s what was so relevant for me.
Our central character, the one who’s mind we’re beckoned into, is a butler at the tail (tale?) end of his career. To say that he was strongly identified with his profession pathetically misses the extent of how it had come to dominate his mind. After all the skills, and the good judgment and insight into human nature that he’d honed over his career our Mr. Stevens is still left trying to identify what the essence of it all is. He names it--dignity--but even in doing so struggles to define that palpable but irreducible quality.
And that’s where the right-reader/right-time comes in for me. Like Stevens I became strongly identified with my former career as a psychotherapist. I should hope I developed the skills, judgment and insight into human nature entailed in doing it well. And yet after being embedded for decades and subjectively knowing what the essence of it all was, it’s still a struggle to define that palpable but irreducible something, to convince one’s self of its worth.
Of course for me, I name the essence of psychotherapy as humanistic engagement -- the recognition that in the midst of the distress, functional difficulties, stressful circumstances, hurtful or unsatisfying relationships there is a human being carrying their unique subjective experience. The psychotherapist’s job is to meaningfully relate to that subjectivity. Try putting your finger definitively on that! We can identify elements like attunement, and humour, and kindness, and empathy but can never exhaustively carve out that space.
Oh, and one final thing. Alongside of the naming and the attempts to define, Ishiguro has his Stevens struggle with the meaning, with the value, of what he spent his life doing -- attempting to justify that it was a worthy way to spend the life that is tailing off towards its close. Ah, the existentialist’s plight.
Timely for this reader.
It doesn’t often happen.
I had no idea such would be for me with The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. After all, it was about a butler.
I found myself thankful I’d watched all the seasons of Downton Abbey before reading this book. It made the imagining easy, not quite so distant. How iconic that setting of Highclere Castle is, and how the characters and plot elements of The Remains of the Day slide in there.
But that’s not the space this novel asks us to occupy. We’re called to an interior space, a space of memory and musings, of trying to put one’s mental finger on something.
And that’s what was so relevant for me.
Our central character, the one who’s mind we’re beckoned into, is a butler at the tail (tale?) end of his career. To say that he was strongly identified with his profession pathetically misses the extent of how it had come to dominate his mind. After all the skills, and the good judgment and insight into human nature that he’d honed over his career our Mr. Stevens is still left trying to identify what the essence of it all is. He names it--dignity--but even in doing so struggles to define that palpable but irreducible quality.
And that’s where the right-reader/right-time comes in for me. Like Stevens I became strongly identified with my former career as a psychotherapist. I should hope I developed the skills, judgment and insight into human nature entailed in doing it well. And yet after being embedded for decades and subjectively knowing what the essence of it all was, it’s still a struggle to define that palpable but irreducible something, to convince one’s self of its worth.
Of course for me, I name the essence of psychotherapy as humanistic engagement -- the recognition that in the midst of the distress, functional difficulties, stressful circumstances, hurtful or unsatisfying relationships there is a human being carrying their unique subjective experience. The psychotherapist’s job is to meaningfully relate to that subjectivity. Try putting your finger definitively on that! We can identify elements like attunement, and humour, and kindness, and empathy but can never exhaustively carve out that space.
Oh, and one final thing. Alongside of the naming and the attempts to define, Ishiguro has his Stevens struggle with the meaning, with the value, of what he spent his life doing -- attempting to justify that it was a worthy way to spend the life that is tailing off towards its close. Ah, the existentialist’s plight.
Timely for this reader.
JAITOUR, Gilles.
Henri's Last Gift
★★★★☆
Upon tending to the last wishes of a recently deceased mentor and friend, Henri, Josh falls into a two week coma. While his earthly existence is suspended, his mind trips into the experience of the afterlife, labelled in the novel as AfterL. There, guided by three previously departed persons including Henri, Josh is lead to heal the trauma of his own life.
AfterL in Jaitour's novel is an existence and experience freed of the theistic ideologies normally attached to concept of the afterlife provided by formal religions. While wondrous and beautiful, it is a place of psychological healing rather than spiritual ecstasy or perdition. As such, the mental experiences of Josh's coma bring a sense of hope, release and meaning.
Jaitour navigates this unmapped, and un-mappable, territory in a way that can leave the reader somewhat disoriented. At times in reading I needed to just go with the flow of the rapidly changing scenes which morphed under the will of the healing guides that accompany Josh.
Henri's Last Gift, is a gift to us as readers, as much as in the narrative it was to the protagonist, Josh. May we, too, come away with life lessons learned.
AfterL in Jaitour's novel is an existence and experience freed of the theistic ideologies normally attached to concept of the afterlife provided by formal religions. While wondrous and beautiful, it is a place of psychological healing rather than spiritual ecstasy or perdition. As such, the mental experiences of Josh's coma bring a sense of hope, release and meaning.
Jaitour navigates this unmapped, and un-mappable, territory in a way that can leave the reader somewhat disoriented. At times in reading I needed to just go with the flow of the rapidly changing scenes which morphed under the will of the healing guides that accompany Josh.
Henri's Last Gift, is a gift to us as readers, as much as in the narrative it was to the protagonist, Josh. May we, too, come away with life lessons learned.
KAISER, Caroline
Virginia's Ghost
★★★★☆
In Virginia’s Ghost, cozy mystery meets ghost story.
Yes, there is a murder. The suspects are a tidy cast of characters in the untidy back rooms of a Toronto auction house. That’s the cozy part of it all. Along side of the murder, other mysterious acts of malfeasance also take place. It’s all somewhat perplexing.
And yes, there is a ghost, an apparition sitting on a “midnight-blue velvet-upholstered art deco settee” in a dark corner of that auction house basement. And yes, that ghost is rather sad and tragic as her story is told through her diary.
The two story lines, ghost and murder, run parallel through the novel. Only the first person narrator sees the ghost and reads the ghost’s diary. She is also victimized as she works in the porcelain department of the auction house. Fortunately for the reader, the narrator is not the murder victim.
Given that I do not typically read in either of these genres it was a bit of stretch for me to engage with a story in both. What could I find compelling? I had trouble caring about the characters; there seemed too many of them working behind the scenes in this auction house. I didn’t want to put in the effort to keep them all straight. However, readers who delight in murder mysteries will likely relish the task of figuring out who the murderer is before it is revealed.
Many descriptive passages in the novel describe fancy stuff that rich people like, old fancy stuff that sells in classy auction houses. That sort of stuff has little appeal to me. Readers who enjoy the details of finery will undoubtedly appreciate that description more than did I.
I look to fiction to understand human nature better, to see it through the eyes of a keenly observant author. What could I possibly learn about human nature from a murder in an auction house and the tragic journal of a woman who died far too young? How could this novel deepen my understanding of the perplexity of being human?
The answer came in the final chapters.
Those chapters provide the keystone. An insight rests atop the parallel lines of plot, akin to the carefully crafted block at the apex of a gothic arch holding the two sides in stable, dynamic tension. This novel is a treatise on how avarice arises from envy. This unifying theme, revealed in those final chapters, ties together the two lines of plot. With that, I am satisfied.
Yes, there is a murder. The suspects are a tidy cast of characters in the untidy back rooms of a Toronto auction house. That’s the cozy part of it all. Along side of the murder, other mysterious acts of malfeasance also take place. It’s all somewhat perplexing.
And yes, there is a ghost, an apparition sitting on a “midnight-blue velvet-upholstered art deco settee” in a dark corner of that auction house basement. And yes, that ghost is rather sad and tragic as her story is told through her diary.
The two story lines, ghost and murder, run parallel through the novel. Only the first person narrator sees the ghost and reads the ghost’s diary. She is also victimized as she works in the porcelain department of the auction house. Fortunately for the reader, the narrator is not the murder victim.
Given that I do not typically read in either of these genres it was a bit of stretch for me to engage with a story in both. What could I find compelling? I had trouble caring about the characters; there seemed too many of them working behind the scenes in this auction house. I didn’t want to put in the effort to keep them all straight. However, readers who delight in murder mysteries will likely relish the task of figuring out who the murderer is before it is revealed.
Many descriptive passages in the novel describe fancy stuff that rich people like, old fancy stuff that sells in classy auction houses. That sort of stuff has little appeal to me. Readers who enjoy the details of finery will undoubtedly appreciate that description more than did I.
I look to fiction to understand human nature better, to see it through the eyes of a keenly observant author. What could I possibly learn about human nature from a murder in an auction house and the tragic journal of a woman who died far too young? How could this novel deepen my understanding of the perplexity of being human?
The answer came in the final chapters.
Those chapters provide the keystone. An insight rests atop the parallel lines of plot, akin to the carefully crafted block at the apex of a gothic arch holding the two sides in stable, dynamic tension. This novel is a treatise on how avarice arises from envy. This unifying theme, revealed in those final chapters, ties together the two lines of plot. With that, I am satisfied.
KINGSOLVER, Barbara.
Demon Copperhead
★★★★★
Football and capitalism: two of the most venerated elements of the American identity. Both play a supporting role in this dark tale.
More on that later.
Barbara Kingsolver gives credit to Charles Dickens in the Acknowledgments included with this novel, her tenth book of best-selling fiction. She has created Demon Copperhead as the story of Dickens’ David Copperfield transplanted into rural Appalachian America (and apparently did the transplant very well). Indeed, it is truly Dicken-esque in its bleakness.
The first few chapters absolutely charmed me as a reader. Written from a first person point-of-view, the vocabulary and structure of language was stunningly surreal. Once adapted to the language, the characterization of those around protagonist Demon took centre stage: the cast of characters were just as surreally drawn. Kingsolver’s talent as a writer held me alongside those characters as they dealt with the tragedy of economically deprived, post coalmining, small town America.
The plotline of the book followed the childhood, adolescence and early adult life of Demon Copperhead in the style of a hero’s journey, the heroics of which was simply to survive. Both his parents had died, a step-father was brutally abusive. The foster care system was not much better. Some characters, all female, come forth to provide sufficient nurture and kindness to help him keep going.
I found the middle of the book long, somewhat tedious as we collected characters along the path Demon journeyed to adulthood. Then after a compelling climax chapter, the denouement ran a bit long as well. It brought a settling to Demon after all the adversity he faced and provided a chance for the reader to revisit some of those characters from along the way. For this reader the final chapter felt contrived. It was satisfyingly written for sure, tying elements from the narrative together. And readers are assured that after all that had occurred, things could turn out okay; well, possibly anyway. In print, the novel runs to 560 pages.
Back to football and capitalism. Both are iconic of the American psyche, beyond reproach in a culture that prides itself in the capacity for dominance in both the market and sport’s field. Understated in the contextual background, both of these haunt through as the true demons of this story.
Within the addiction literature, we have the scenario of the elephant in middle of the living room: a disruptive, destructive influence which no one is willing to acknowledge or deal with. Football, as it compromises the supple and still developing bodies of male youth, and the capitalistic success of the pharmaceutical opioids compromising the health of the nation, are the elephants in the middle of this living room. Kingsolver only makes passing mention of them as needed for the plot of the tale. And yet there they are, sadly tragic, these icons of America.
I have read Kingsolver described as willing to take on the issues of social justice in her novels. Perhaps, for readers who would rather luxuriate in a glorious notion of Americanism it would be better to skip this one, turn on ESPN and pop an oxy for the afternoon instead.
More on that later.
Barbara Kingsolver gives credit to Charles Dickens in the Acknowledgments included with this novel, her tenth book of best-selling fiction. She has created Demon Copperhead as the story of Dickens’ David Copperfield transplanted into rural Appalachian America (and apparently did the transplant very well). Indeed, it is truly Dicken-esque in its bleakness.
The first few chapters absolutely charmed me as a reader. Written from a first person point-of-view, the vocabulary and structure of language was stunningly surreal. Once adapted to the language, the characterization of those around protagonist Demon took centre stage: the cast of characters were just as surreally drawn. Kingsolver’s talent as a writer held me alongside those characters as they dealt with the tragedy of economically deprived, post coalmining, small town America.
The plotline of the book followed the childhood, adolescence and early adult life of Demon Copperhead in the style of a hero’s journey, the heroics of which was simply to survive. Both his parents had died, a step-father was brutally abusive. The foster care system was not much better. Some characters, all female, come forth to provide sufficient nurture and kindness to help him keep going.
I found the middle of the book long, somewhat tedious as we collected characters along the path Demon journeyed to adulthood. Then after a compelling climax chapter, the denouement ran a bit long as well. It brought a settling to Demon after all the adversity he faced and provided a chance for the reader to revisit some of those characters from along the way. For this reader the final chapter felt contrived. It was satisfyingly written for sure, tying elements from the narrative together. And readers are assured that after all that had occurred, things could turn out okay; well, possibly anyway. In print, the novel runs to 560 pages.
Back to football and capitalism. Both are iconic of the American psyche, beyond reproach in a culture that prides itself in the capacity for dominance in both the market and sport’s field. Understated in the contextual background, both of these haunt through as the true demons of this story.
Within the addiction literature, we have the scenario of the elephant in middle of the living room: a disruptive, destructive influence which no one is willing to acknowledge or deal with. Football, as it compromises the supple and still developing bodies of male youth, and the capitalistic success of the pharmaceutical opioids compromising the health of the nation, are the elephants in the middle of this living room. Kingsolver only makes passing mention of them as needed for the plot of the tale. And yet there they are, sadly tragic, these icons of America.
I have read Kingsolver described as willing to take on the issues of social justice in her novels. Perhaps, for readers who would rather luxuriate in a glorious notion of Americanism it would be better to skip this one, turn on ESPN and pop an oxy for the afternoon instead.
KOGAWA, JOY
Obasan
★★★★★
The novel Obasan will change your sense of what it means to be a Canadian (or if you are not Canadian, how you think about Canadians -- you know, how nice and apologetic we are!). The story is a first-person account by a second-generation Japanese Canadian named Naomi.
Obasan is Naomi’s aunt. Naomi. a teacher, returns to her aunt’s home at the time of her uncle’s death. Obasan and Uncle had raised Naomi and her brother Stephen. In 1941 when Naomi was age 5, this Japanese Canadian family was displaced from Vancouver, housed for years in an internment camp in the interior of BC, and then was dispersed to a small town in Southern Alberta.
Returning to the home of her aunt, Naomi recalls the subjective experience of her tragic childhood. Another aunt, Emily, retained documentation of the treatment of Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government at the time of the Second World War. As Naomi reads these documents she is able to set in context her own childhood memories. Long left questions are finally answered.
This deeply personal narrative leads the reader to suspect it to be the author’s own life story. The entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia on author Joy Kogawa identifies Obasan as being semi-autobiographical (www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/joy-kogawa). Dream content and stream-of-consciousness writing in the narrative takes you into the mind of the small child brutally impacted by horrendous inhumanity and trauma enacted onto Japanese Canadians.
The treatment of Japanese Canadians is yet another atrocity that is part of our Canadian history. In recent years, news reports of mass graves and the findings of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission have brought into awareness the treatment of our First Nations peoples. We are sorrowful for the atrocities of the Indian Residential Schools with its attempt at cultural genocide. So too should we be sorrowful for the impact on Japanese Canadians for the dispossession of property, the wrenching from place and the dispersal of community as a tragic result of the decisions by our Canadian government.
Here in Canada, we culture for ourselves an identity of being a just and welcoming society, embracing peoples of many nationalities and racial backgrounds. But in the heart-wrenching narrative of Obasan we face the ugliness of our past as a country once again. It is yet another instance of an attempt to eradicate a culture that has been part of Canadian mosaic.
It is important for us to know this part of our history. Joy Kogawa brings it to our minds and hearts in this compelling novel.
Obasan is Naomi’s aunt. Naomi. a teacher, returns to her aunt’s home at the time of her uncle’s death. Obasan and Uncle had raised Naomi and her brother Stephen. In 1941 when Naomi was age 5, this Japanese Canadian family was displaced from Vancouver, housed for years in an internment camp in the interior of BC, and then was dispersed to a small town in Southern Alberta.
Returning to the home of her aunt, Naomi recalls the subjective experience of her tragic childhood. Another aunt, Emily, retained documentation of the treatment of Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government at the time of the Second World War. As Naomi reads these documents she is able to set in context her own childhood memories. Long left questions are finally answered.
This deeply personal narrative leads the reader to suspect it to be the author’s own life story. The entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia on author Joy Kogawa identifies Obasan as being semi-autobiographical (www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/joy-kogawa). Dream content and stream-of-consciousness writing in the narrative takes you into the mind of the small child brutally impacted by horrendous inhumanity and trauma enacted onto Japanese Canadians.
The treatment of Japanese Canadians is yet another atrocity that is part of our Canadian history. In recent years, news reports of mass graves and the findings of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission have brought into awareness the treatment of our First Nations peoples. We are sorrowful for the atrocities of the Indian Residential Schools with its attempt at cultural genocide. So too should we be sorrowful for the impact on Japanese Canadians for the dispossession of property, the wrenching from place and the dispersal of community as a tragic result of the decisions by our Canadian government.
Here in Canada, we culture for ourselves an identity of being a just and welcoming society, embracing peoples of many nationalities and racial backgrounds. But in the heart-wrenching narrative of Obasan we face the ugliness of our past as a country once again. It is yet another instance of an attempt to eradicate a culture that has been part of Canadian mosaic.
It is important for us to know this part of our history. Joy Kogawa brings it to our minds and hearts in this compelling novel.
LAWSON, Mary.
A Town Called Solace
★★★★☆
Clara is just seven-years-old. Her older sister has gone missing, run away from home. Daily, Clara keeps watch at the living room window.
And, that is not all. Clara’s elderly next-door neighbour, Mrs. Orchard, has gone into the hospital with heart troubles. Then a strange man goes into Mrs. Orchard’s house, carrying boxes that he puts into the middle of the living room floor. How is Clara going to manage feeding Mrs. Orchard’s cat, Moses, with him staying there?
A Town Called Solace adroitly takes the reader back a half century to a remote town in Northern Ontario, to a simpler time and place. But the complexities of human yearning and human nature persist. The story is told from the point-of-view of those three characters—Clara, Mrs. Orchard, and that strange man, Liam Kane -- seeking solace from the complexity of their lives.
As a reader I was caught up in the subjective lives of these characters, each at a critical and confusing time. They are not living their best lives, perhaps never had, struggling with what circumstance has brought them. But they find that solace in each other. At the beginning of the novel, it is the dying Mrs. Orchard who holds them together. In the end, it is the cat, Moses.
I was captivated by these characters. I didn’t want to rush to the end of the book to find out how it would turn out, I wanted to walk slowly with them, the way that they walk. I felt an affinity to them, content that I had gotten to know them. After the book is closed, they still occupy a place in my heart.
And, that is not all. Clara’s elderly next-door neighbour, Mrs. Orchard, has gone into the hospital with heart troubles. Then a strange man goes into Mrs. Orchard’s house, carrying boxes that he puts into the middle of the living room floor. How is Clara going to manage feeding Mrs. Orchard’s cat, Moses, with him staying there?
A Town Called Solace adroitly takes the reader back a half century to a remote town in Northern Ontario, to a simpler time and place. But the complexities of human yearning and human nature persist. The story is told from the point-of-view of those three characters—Clara, Mrs. Orchard, and that strange man, Liam Kane -- seeking solace from the complexity of their lives.
As a reader I was caught up in the subjective lives of these characters, each at a critical and confusing time. They are not living their best lives, perhaps never had, struggling with what circumstance has brought them. But they find that solace in each other. At the beginning of the novel, it is the dying Mrs. Orchard who holds them together. In the end, it is the cat, Moses.
I was captivated by these characters. I didn’t want to rush to the end of the book to find out how it would turn out, I wanted to walk slowly with them, the way that they walk. I felt an affinity to them, content that I had gotten to know them. After the book is closed, they still occupy a place in my heart.
MAHFOUZ, Nabuib.
The Cairo Trilogy
Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street
PALACE WALK
★★★★★
Immersive. A most able and impressive fiction.
Palace Walk irresistibly draws the reader into the intricacies of a Cairo family in 1918. The father is a store owner, well respected in his community. In keeping with highly conservative Muslim values, the mother is confined to the home caring for him and their five offspring. Their three boys (the oldest a half sibling to the others) and two girls are each claiming their own unique personalities and moving toward taking their place in society.
The backdrop to this family drama is the Great War coming to an end. Egypt is occupied by Australian soldiers as an English Protectorate. The urge toward national independence plays out as the family goes about its daily life.
Naguib Mahfouz crafts this novel by focusing in turn on each of the seven family members as they navigate the demands of their culture and the rising political unrest around them. As a reader we are privy to the thoughts, hopes, fears, attractions and impulses of each family member.
Religious and cultural values within this family are highly gendered. Males are allowed their sometimes sordid indulgences and females accept that freedom of movement and self-determination is denied to them. Left to their own desires the two oldest males in the family, the father and the oldest son, pursue their entitlements with debauchery and expectation that all of their desires and needs are to be met
The portrayal of each family member is compelling, creating strong feelings for the reader. Of them all, I was most drawn to the youngest child, a ten-year-old boy. His playful naivete sparkled throughout. Unlike his older brothers he is fearful of but not yet oppressed by the rigid and punitive father, still abiding much of his family life within the context of his mother and older sisters. By the end of the story we are left to wonder if he too will be drawn into the destructive entitlement and arrogance that his culture allows its males to pursue.
And perhaps we will find out in the two novels yet to come in the Cairo Trilogy. Yes, there are two more books, each a generation of time ahead, promising continued insight into the ancient city of Cairo and its Islamic culture, tracking forward into this family’s future.
Oh, and by the way. There's a stunning ending. I didn’t see that coming but in retrospect it makes perfect sense.
PALACE OF DESIRE
★★★★☆
Coming several years after Palace Walk, Palace of Desire details the treachery of male desire, entitlement and obsession.
Set in Cairo between the two World Wars, we follow the lives of a father -- al-Sayyid Ahmad, well-respected as a merchant but emotionally distant and demanding in his own home -- and his two sons, Yasin and his younger, half-brother, Kamal. Yasin, brutish and neither respected nor particularly successful, walks totally in his father’s self-indulgent footsteps. Both men live their lives entitled to their nighttime pleasures with alcohol and women. Kamal, a foil to them and a hopelessly ruminant romantic, is deeply obsessed with an unrequited love.
As a sidebar to the story of these male family members we get glimpses of Kamal’s full sisters. Both of them are now married to two brothers, residing in their husbands’ family home with their children. Aisha, the younger is sweet, gentle and well-liked while Khadija combative and generally miserable.
Al-Sayyid Ahmad and Yasin pay lip service to the Qur’an and the Muslim faith but live in pursuit of their own impulses and pleasures, this despite the impact such a life has on the women whom they expect to take care of them. Kamal is quite the contrast. We are frequently submerged by deep dives into the indulgence of Kamal’s thoughts as he struggles with a life that doesn’t turn out in keeping with the fulfillment of his desire.
Through the escapades of Yasin and his father, the reader witnesses basic human decency and interpersonal respect lost as gender is empowered and entitled. The actions of this father and first-born son are an affront -- perhaps iconic of the culture in that time and place, but telling as a misadventure of human nature. For these two men, indulgences are claimed as their right. While occasionally tainted with some remorse or even guilt, callous and self-centred actions are built into their very character.
It would be too easy for a modern western reader to just dismiss this as an over-there, back-then. This reading challenges us to wonder about what within our own culture privileges some at the expense of others and allows entitlement and self-indulgence to compromise basic human dignity.
SUGAR STREET
★★★★☆
The Cairo trilogy ends back in the family residence located on Palace Walk. Again the reader is focused on the first character we had met in the initial novel. Thirty or so years have passed. A family has shifted through to a third generation. Politics have played out, unsatisfactorily. Personalities have taken on their strengths and then waned. Lives have been only partially fulfilled. This family story is filled with both tragedy and the quest for love and belonging.
The Cairo trilogy takes us deep into the culture of a Muslim family. Early on, it is highly confined and marked by gender. Modernism creeps in as the generations pass, creating options, opening up new life works and philosophies. Paths diverge and yet a sense of family is retained throughout.
In hard cover, The Cairo Trilogy runs to over 1300 pages. The three novels are separated by periods of approximately 15 years. I took them one at a time, gave myself other readings in between. Finished within a year.
This novel created anger within me for the male entitlement that can come with religious conservatism. Thus, even though it was set 100 years ago, it is contemporary with current political strife. One can only wonder what might be written a hundred years from now about religious conservatism in the early 21st century. The novel created within me a sense of truly wanting characters to find fulfillment and satisfaction but recognizing that with the constraints of context and life choices that might never be.
This set of novels transports one to another time and place, different politics and social structures. In doing so, I as the reader have been invited to reflect on my own particular time and place, on current politics and social structures, and on the inevitable struggles of the human condition.
MICHAELS, Sean.
Do you remember being born?
★★★★★ I guess.
I expect the literary critics might really like this novel. For the rest of us, the read might take a bit of determination to muddle through its middle.
I thought the premise was brilliant: a Pulitizer Prize winning poet (Marian Ffarmer) is contracted to write a poem in collaboration with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) computer program (named Charlotte), a poem to be rushed into publication a week after the collaboration begins.
Author Sean Michael takes this premise through a melange of writing styles: shifting Points of View; stream of consciousness writing; poetry fragments; life-story recollections. The dialog between poetess and program is reminiscent of a chat box with the AI program responding in a manner that is casual and … almost-undiscernible-from-being … human.
Some characters are pleasingly two dimensional (the software engineers and the business executives). Some characters are refreshingly human; e.g. the driver (Rhoda) who conveys poetess Ffarmer to and from the sterile company campus housing Charlotte.
There is a telling irony within the character of the poetess. Throughout her life she needed to disengage from others to have the clarity of mind to write her poetry, even leaving the raising of her son to her estranged marital partner. And yet, once she found herself collaborating with the AI program her need of others, real human others, became apparent. Driver Rhoda provided a welcome antidote to the hours spent with Charlotte.
In this regard, at one point our poetess Ffarmer pitied Charlotte for being ‘sealed off from the tapestry of relationships and community that could nourish an artist’.
This book embodies the collective horror for both authors and readers that AI is destined replace human created literature. Marian reflects ‘But what does it do to people if everything they read is just the upchuck of a very smart computer program?’
Indeed. We even get a taste of that in this book. The Author’s Note at the end of the novel revealed the use of AI (Open AI’s Chat GPT-3 and Moorebot poetry-generating software) for generating some of the novel’s prose and Charlotte’s poetry. All AI generated material was highlighted in the book. (Gosh, until I got to the end and read the Author’s note I had no idea what the highlighting of those passages signified.)
It all leaves this reader feeling rather chilled, rather taken in, perhaps even betrayed. But the premise was good … and I guess, so was the story.
(bloggers’ note: none of this review was generated on Chat-GPT). Believe me!
I thought the premise was brilliant: a Pulitizer Prize winning poet (Marian Ffarmer) is contracted to write a poem in collaboration with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) computer program (named Charlotte), a poem to be rushed into publication a week after the collaboration begins.
Author Sean Michael takes this premise through a melange of writing styles: shifting Points of View; stream of consciousness writing; poetry fragments; life-story recollections. The dialog between poetess and program is reminiscent of a chat box with the AI program responding in a manner that is casual and … almost-undiscernible-from-being … human.
Some characters are pleasingly two dimensional (the software engineers and the business executives). Some characters are refreshingly human; e.g. the driver (Rhoda) who conveys poetess Ffarmer to and from the sterile company campus housing Charlotte.
There is a telling irony within the character of the poetess. Throughout her life she needed to disengage from others to have the clarity of mind to write her poetry, even leaving the raising of her son to her estranged marital partner. And yet, once she found herself collaborating with the AI program her need of others, real human others, became apparent. Driver Rhoda provided a welcome antidote to the hours spent with Charlotte.
In this regard, at one point our poetess Ffarmer pitied Charlotte for being ‘sealed off from the tapestry of relationships and community that could nourish an artist’.
This book embodies the collective horror for both authors and readers that AI is destined replace human created literature. Marian reflects ‘But what does it do to people if everything they read is just the upchuck of a very smart computer program?’
Indeed. We even get a taste of that in this book. The Author’s Note at the end of the novel revealed the use of AI (Open AI’s Chat GPT-3 and Moorebot poetry-generating software) for generating some of the novel’s prose and Charlotte’s poetry. All AI generated material was highlighted in the book. (Gosh, until I got to the end and read the Author’s note I had no idea what the highlighting of those passages signified.)
It all leaves this reader feeling rather chilled, rather taken in, perhaps even betrayed. But the premise was good … and I guess, so was the story.
(bloggers’ note: none of this review was generated on Chat-GPT). Believe me!
NG, Celeste.
Everything I never told you
★★★☆☆
The premise is great.
And the commentary on a cultural issue -- a mixed racial family trying to find a place in America -- that I can get behind.
Celeste Ng takes us inside a family before, after and through a crisis -- he drowning death of an adolescent daughter. No one handles things very well. In her approach to the novel Ng shares the thoughts and perspectives of each of the characters, the omniscient point-of-view. With this approach I found myself drowning in the eddies of perspective much like the poor teen drowned in the lake near the house.
And while the reader can empathize with each family member, to a certain extent anyway, they as characters seem completely unable to empathize with each other. They bounce against each other with misunderstanding and disappointment, struggling for what little of intimacy or companionship that might be found. Everyone misses the mark, except for the youngest who spends a lot of time curled up under the table hearing it all.
I also struggled with an uneven progression of time in the novel. At one point we were after the critical event but then later we were back before it. Alas. Head-scratch. Okay, I guess.
This could’ve been a powerful story. Maybe it actually is and I just didn’t work hard enough as a reader to be able to appreciate it.
And the commentary on a cultural issue -- a mixed racial family trying to find a place in America -- that I can get behind.
Celeste Ng takes us inside a family before, after and through a crisis -- he drowning death of an adolescent daughter. No one handles things very well. In her approach to the novel Ng shares the thoughts and perspectives of each of the characters, the omniscient point-of-view. With this approach I found myself drowning in the eddies of perspective much like the poor teen drowned in the lake near the house.
And while the reader can empathize with each family member, to a certain extent anyway, they as characters seem completely unable to empathize with each other. They bounce against each other with misunderstanding and disappointment, struggling for what little of intimacy or companionship that might be found. Everyone misses the mark, except for the youngest who spends a lot of time curled up under the table hearing it all.
I also struggled with an uneven progression of time in the novel. At one point we were after the critical event but then later we were back before it. Alas. Head-scratch. Okay, I guess.
This could’ve been a powerful story. Maybe it actually is and I just didn’t work hard enough as a reader to be able to appreciate it.
OWENS, Delia.
Where the Crawdads Sing
★★★★☆
I drifted through passages of absolutely sterling prose in Where the Crawdads Sing in a state of respectful awe. My journey was much like the passage of the protagonist, Kya, in her modest boat navigating the coastal marsh of North Carolina. There are literary delights there, emerging with all the surprise of spotting wild life amongst tangled mosses and still waters. If you are going to read this book, read it for the ecological description. Be transported. Be moved.
This novel carries the powerful story of a woman who survived abuse, marginalization, and sexual exploitation through her own strength and wits. She ended up living her best life. We can only be left with a profound sense of admiration and inspiration in person of Kya. It is a hero’s tale, with an unlikely female in the central role. The novel also documents the underclass of America’s poor and the marginalization of people of colour. The novel has social merit for those stories told.
And there was something uniquely satisfying about the murder victim being an entitled, privileged, and esteemed male -- the —star quarterback for the football team.
Amongst the small handful of characters, two stood out as complex and satisfying in my reading of Crawdads. Kya will live on my mind, and I will hold onto her with a profound sense of respect. And there was a black man, operating the little store and fueling depot of a dilapidated marina. His name was Jumpin’ and he eked goodness. He’ll stay with me too.
But sadly, the other characters in the novel are stereotyped and two dimensional. There’s that high school’s star quarterback, a gaggle of shallow and cliquish girls, a socially awkward but kind fellow, a brilliant trial lawyer, a publisher in a tweed jacket, an abusive neglectful father, a couple of police just doing their job. Compared with the richness and depth of description for the natural world and of the protagonist, these cardboard humans lacked substance and dimension. From them, a reader receives the plot of the novel and little else.
Part way through the book I lamented to a friend that the novel seemed “oh, so very American”. It took a few days after reading for me to settle on what that Americanization was. This is yet another tale of American exceptionalism— -- the ethos of anyone in the Great-Country-of-America, no matter how humble their beginnings, can individually rise to greatness, can do so using their own unique gifts and perseverance. Oh, that awesome strength of American Individualism.
I suspect that for readers in the USA this book feeds their need for self-indulgent satisfaction and affirmation. For non-American readers this theme is so tawdry and overplayed in American culture that it breeds resentment and distaste rather than respect.
For this reader, it suggests in the future I will stay away from American literature.
This novel carries the powerful story of a woman who survived abuse, marginalization, and sexual exploitation through her own strength and wits. She ended up living her best life. We can only be left with a profound sense of admiration and inspiration in person of Kya. It is a hero’s tale, with an unlikely female in the central role. The novel also documents the underclass of America’s poor and the marginalization of people of colour. The novel has social merit for those stories told.
And there was something uniquely satisfying about the murder victim being an entitled, privileged, and esteemed male -- the —star quarterback for the football team.
Amongst the small handful of characters, two stood out as complex and satisfying in my reading of Crawdads. Kya will live on my mind, and I will hold onto her with a profound sense of respect. And there was a black man, operating the little store and fueling depot of a dilapidated marina. His name was Jumpin’ and he eked goodness. He’ll stay with me too.
But sadly, the other characters in the novel are stereotyped and two dimensional. There’s that high school’s star quarterback, a gaggle of shallow and cliquish girls, a socially awkward but kind fellow, a brilliant trial lawyer, a publisher in a tweed jacket, an abusive neglectful father, a couple of police just doing their job. Compared with the richness and depth of description for the natural world and of the protagonist, these cardboard humans lacked substance and dimension. From them, a reader receives the plot of the novel and little else.
Part way through the book I lamented to a friend that the novel seemed “oh, so very American”. It took a few days after reading for me to settle on what that Americanization was. This is yet another tale of American exceptionalism— -- the ethos of anyone in the Great-Country-of-America, no matter how humble their beginnings, can individually rise to greatness, can do so using their own unique gifts and perseverance. Oh, that awesome strength of American Individualism.
I suspect that for readers in the USA this book feeds their need for self-indulgent satisfaction and affirmation. For non-American readers this theme is so tawdry and overplayed in American culture that it breeds resentment and distaste rather than respect.
For this reader, it suggests in the future I will stay away from American literature.
PENDZIWOL, Jean.
The Lightkeeper's Daughters
★★★☆☆
A foster teen tags the fence of a nursing home and is assigned restorative rehabilitation to scrape and repaint the fence. While there, she spots on an elderly blind woman’s mantle the exquisite drawing of two dragonflies, a drawing clearly by the same artist of one in her hand-me-down violin case. And so the story of an unlikely pair unraveling the past begins.
Assisted by the journals of the lighthouse keeper from decades before, journals which trigger memories for the elderly woman, the story gradually emerges. Tragic events took place on the island where the lighthouse keeper and his family lived. That story emerges mysteriously, much like a vessel on the foggy lake. Amongst the puzzling details is the discovery by one of the lighthouse keeper’s daughter with a grave that bears her own name.
In the end this novel is both a page-turner and a head-scratcher. With the twists and turns of the story, even after I have finished the read, I continued to puzzle over who-is-who in the tenuous linkages between the foster child and elderly woman.
The Lightkeeper’s Daughters succeeds in immersing us in a distance lonely place, empathetic to the flawed personalities who lived together there. The author had a puzzling story to tell and the literary devices used to tell it left me wishing she could have chosen a simpler tale. The characters in the novel were vivid, the events shocking, but the final package leaves the reader having to work too hard to piece it all together.
Assisted by the journals of the lighthouse keeper from decades before, journals which trigger memories for the elderly woman, the story gradually emerges. Tragic events took place on the island where the lighthouse keeper and his family lived. That story emerges mysteriously, much like a vessel on the foggy lake. Amongst the puzzling details is the discovery by one of the lighthouse keeper’s daughter with a grave that bears her own name.
In the end this novel is both a page-turner and a head-scratcher. With the twists and turns of the story, even after I have finished the read, I continued to puzzle over who-is-who in the tenuous linkages between the foster child and elderly woman.
The Lightkeeper’s Daughters succeeds in immersing us in a distance lonely place, empathetic to the flawed personalities who lived together there. The author had a puzzling story to tell and the literary devices used to tell it left me wishing she could have chosen a simpler tale. The characters in the novel were vivid, the events shocking, but the final package leaves the reader having to work too hard to piece it all together.
PENNER, Sarah.
The Lost Apothecary
★★★★☆
Two women, both betrayed in love. Both women walk the streets of London, down to the Thames. One is in search of what she can learn of the other. These two women are united by a glass apothecary's vial, the image of a bear etched into its surface.
These two women are separated by over 200 years of history.
Told from the perspective of three different first-person narrators, The Lost Apothecary crosses the centuries, winding its way with a sense of mystery. Readers will relate to the present day character, a woman in an unfulfilled marriage and life, but will also relish the escape to another place and time, a journey into the history of everyday folk of a different era.
The Lost Apothecary reads as smoothly as the glass surface of that apothecary’s vial. As that vial was pulled from the mud at the side of the Thames, so also is a story of multiple murders pulled from the murk of history.
The novel is a gem, well crafted, told with a sense of the slow reveal. In the end for this reader, it was a bit too tidy, a bit too contrived, a bit too interlaced. But that may be satisfying for other readers.
PENNY, Louise.
The Madness of Crowds
★★★★★
Ah, the difference between being correct and being right.
The pursuit of scientific enquiry -- say, the seeking of an innovative psychiatric cure 70 years ago that goes horrifically wrong or the statistical analysis of the burden of a 21st century pandemic on society's health care system -- can lead into morally treacherous territory.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache encounters first a near miss and then a brutal completion of a murder in the idyllic town of Three Pines. To solve the case he must piece together clues that span decades, the despair and destructiveness that can exist in the depth of human nature, and a plethora of possible motives for murderous actions. He does so while a spate of interesting characters hang around, characters that provide commentary and comic relief for this and other novels in the series—a painter, and a poet, and a particularly crude duck.
For much of the book we wander with him, lost in the woods of potential motives and shrouded histories -- trodding along purposely, as if in the snow packed, timbered hillside around the small Anglo town between Montreal and the US border. In the end we come out, a little wiser perhaps, with a satisfying answer to the murderous puzzle -- clearly correct but revealing of how morally misguided we humans can be.
Penny sets a high standard for post-pandemic fiction that incorporates the societal lessons to be learned.
The pursuit of scientific enquiry -- say, the seeking of an innovative psychiatric cure 70 years ago that goes horrifically wrong or the statistical analysis of the burden of a 21st century pandemic on society's health care system -- can lead into morally treacherous territory.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache encounters first a near miss and then a brutal completion of a murder in the idyllic town of Three Pines. To solve the case he must piece together clues that span decades, the despair and destructiveness that can exist in the depth of human nature, and a plethora of possible motives for murderous actions. He does so while a spate of interesting characters hang around, characters that provide commentary and comic relief for this and other novels in the series—a painter, and a poet, and a particularly crude duck.
For much of the book we wander with him, lost in the woods of potential motives and shrouded histories -- trodding along purposely, as if in the snow packed, timbered hillside around the small Anglo town between Montreal and the US border. In the end we come out, a little wiser perhaps, with a satisfying answer to the murderous puzzle -- clearly correct but revealing of how morally misguided we humans can be.
Penny sets a high standard for post-pandemic fiction that incorporates the societal lessons to be learned.
ROBOTHAM, Mandy.
The German Midwife
★★★★★
A study in irony.
The German Midwife (first published in England under the title A Woman of War) by Mandy Robotham takes the reader on a deeply intimate, deeply disturbing journey into a rare corner of the Reich in Nazi Germany.
There is nothing easy about this book. Oh, the writing is flawless in its flow and occasional delights of description or phrase. And the central character, despite the moral dilemma she faces, goes well beyond likeable to be deeply honorable. The context drawn from history is compelling. The human stories shoe-horned into that context are more compelling yet. Setting all that easy aside, this book is hard for the quandary it poses.
That quandary? How to act justly, compassionately, and with love in the midst of the hate and horror created by the pinnacle of human evil.
As an author who herself has been a midwife, Robotham brings detailed realism to the many birth scenes -- all are starkly raw in their descriptions and gloriously celebratory in the moments of connection between the newborn and mother. Many of these scenes take place in the birthing barracks of the Concentration Camp with the babies killed shortly after their births. Imagine the abject horror of that. Our central character, midwife Anke, manages to bring the best of her humanity into this bleakest of all human machinations.
Then Anke is pulled from that depth of human depravity to tend to an expectant mother, Eva Braun, on a hilltop estate. Eva is to give birth to the child of her fiance, Adolf Hitler. Trapped by threats against her and her family perpetrated by Hitler’s Reich, Anke is to assist the coming into the world of his very prodigy.
Ah, the irony.
And if all that is not ironic enough, Robotham resolves the quandary with yet another ironic twist, one that is both grim, hopeful and faintly satisfying.
There’s nothing easy about this story. It is definitely a five-star read.
The German Midwife (first published in England under the title A Woman of War) by Mandy Robotham takes the reader on a deeply intimate, deeply disturbing journey into a rare corner of the Reich in Nazi Germany.
There is nothing easy about this book. Oh, the writing is flawless in its flow and occasional delights of description or phrase. And the central character, despite the moral dilemma she faces, goes well beyond likeable to be deeply honorable. The context drawn from history is compelling. The human stories shoe-horned into that context are more compelling yet. Setting all that easy aside, this book is hard for the quandary it poses.
That quandary? How to act justly, compassionately, and with love in the midst of the hate and horror created by the pinnacle of human evil.
As an author who herself has been a midwife, Robotham brings detailed realism to the many birth scenes -- all are starkly raw in their descriptions and gloriously celebratory in the moments of connection between the newborn and mother. Many of these scenes take place in the birthing barracks of the Concentration Camp with the babies killed shortly after their births. Imagine the abject horror of that. Our central character, midwife Anke, manages to bring the best of her humanity into this bleakest of all human machinations.
Then Anke is pulled from that depth of human depravity to tend to an expectant mother, Eva Braun, on a hilltop estate. Eva is to give birth to the child of her fiance, Adolf Hitler. Trapped by threats against her and her family perpetrated by Hitler’s Reich, Anke is to assist the coming into the world of his very prodigy.
Ah, the irony.
And if all that is not ironic enough, Robotham resolves the quandary with yet another ironic twist, one that is both grim, hopeful and faintly satisfying.
There’s nothing easy about this story. It is definitely a five-star read.
SALINGER, J. D.
Franny and Zooey
★★★★☆
The characters in this short novel are rather unpleasant. One would not like to be stuck in a room somewhere with them. But as readers we are.
The plot of this short novel is peculiarly non-existent. It reads like a stage play, the sets elaborated with myriad details and self-absorbed dialogue stands in for any semblance of action. Yes, there are scenes, melodramatic ones, scenes that a person would rather not look at. But as readers, we do.
And, the worse part of it all? As a novel, Franny and Zooey makes you think. It makes you think about how personalities get distorted, how brutal words can be when formed into ego-enhancing diatribes, how vacuous intellectualism is. It makes us wonder if it is worth searching for something deeper, some spirituality to absorb us and relieve us of living out our own disastrous personalities and unsatisfying perspectives. Alas, as the novel progresses we see the pursuit of that spirituality may indeed pose an even further risk.
Franny and Zooey are sister and brother in their early twenties, Zooey a few years older. Franny is in the midst of an emotional breakdown, presumably brought on by an obsession with a religious practice she hopes would usher her into a mystically fulfilled state. They are the youngest of a precocious sib-line, one heady from its years on a radio show in which each sibling in turn showed off their superior knowledge and wit as children. One older sibling has already committed suicide, another was lost in the war. Their obsessed and intrusive mother blunders her way into the scenes with Franny and Zooey. When she is there, they call her by her first name, belying any useful motherliness. She treats them as though they are still children.
The time is the mid 1950s. The place, Manhattan.
Two settings dominate the book. One is a pretentious little restaurant haunted by equally pretentious college types. The other is a fifth floor apartment crammed with all manner of memorabilia and accumulated stuff. Within that apartment, amidst the personalities and possessions, there is little room to breathe. Against this backdrop of tawdry richness and faded glory, we are drawn over and over again to Franny and Zooey, each caught in their impossible self-centredness. As they interact, they spiral downward, Franny seeks some consolation for her emotional suffering from her brother. She finds none, until she finds a little in a curious twist at the end.
And yet, with all the unpleasantness of personality and possession we end up feeling for Franny. Seemingly, her only comfort is the family cat, Bloomberg. Which is all rather sad.
If you choose to read this book, do so because you will be absorbed in it, emerging more thankful for your own life. If the hallmark of good writing is its capacity to make the reader feel, and think, and self-reflect … then this book is very good writing.
The plot of this short novel is peculiarly non-existent. It reads like a stage play, the sets elaborated with myriad details and self-absorbed dialogue stands in for any semblance of action. Yes, there are scenes, melodramatic ones, scenes that a person would rather not look at. But as readers, we do.
And, the worse part of it all? As a novel, Franny and Zooey makes you think. It makes you think about how personalities get distorted, how brutal words can be when formed into ego-enhancing diatribes, how vacuous intellectualism is. It makes us wonder if it is worth searching for something deeper, some spirituality to absorb us and relieve us of living out our own disastrous personalities and unsatisfying perspectives. Alas, as the novel progresses we see the pursuit of that spirituality may indeed pose an even further risk.
Franny and Zooey are sister and brother in their early twenties, Zooey a few years older. Franny is in the midst of an emotional breakdown, presumably brought on by an obsession with a religious practice she hopes would usher her into a mystically fulfilled state. They are the youngest of a precocious sib-line, one heady from its years on a radio show in which each sibling in turn showed off their superior knowledge and wit as children. One older sibling has already committed suicide, another was lost in the war. Their obsessed and intrusive mother blunders her way into the scenes with Franny and Zooey. When she is there, they call her by her first name, belying any useful motherliness. She treats them as though they are still children.
The time is the mid 1950s. The place, Manhattan.
Two settings dominate the book. One is a pretentious little restaurant haunted by equally pretentious college types. The other is a fifth floor apartment crammed with all manner of memorabilia and accumulated stuff. Within that apartment, amidst the personalities and possessions, there is little room to breathe. Against this backdrop of tawdry richness and faded glory, we are drawn over and over again to Franny and Zooey, each caught in their impossible self-centredness. As they interact, they spiral downward, Franny seeks some consolation for her emotional suffering from her brother. She finds none, until she finds a little in a curious twist at the end.
And yet, with all the unpleasantness of personality and possession we end up feeling for Franny. Seemingly, her only comfort is the family cat, Bloomberg. Which is all rather sad.
If you choose to read this book, do so because you will be absorbed in it, emerging more thankful for your own life. If the hallmark of good writing is its capacity to make the reader feel, and think, and self-reflect … then this book is very good writing.
STINTZ, John Elizabeth.
Vanishing Monuments
★★★☆☆
Alani, a gender-non-binary photographer, gets word that hir mother’s dementia has worsened in the care home. Ze makes the journey back to Winnipeg, the city of hir childhood -- across the USA/Canada border, sucked back through decades of hir life. In addition to visiting hir mom, there’s the house ze shared with hir mom and its contents to deal with.
Those are non-gender pronouns: hir rather than him or her, ze rather than she or he. Even the two cats in the tale are each individually a they/them/their. Author John Elizabeth Stintzi assists the reader early on in the narrative with the introduction of another character using those pronouns. As the novel is written in the first person but described here in the third, I will use those pronouns for this review.
It is not just the home of hir childhood to which ze returns. Ze submerses hirself in hir memory palace. The memory palace serves as a mnemonic device structuring the last thirty years or so of hir life. It mirrors the physical home Alani shared with hir mother. Much like the way photographs bring into the present a scene of the past, so also the memory palace, triggered by the physical childhood home, brings the events of Alani’s life into hir flow of consciousness. Alani’s has life spanned three different countries. It’s been comprised of times of male, female and non-binary identification.
In her progressive dementia, Alani’s mother has lost the capacity to speak and she is unresponsive to Alani’s presence. Alani’s visits to hir mom in the care home are thus empty of connection. Much like hir mother’s camera, which Alani keeps strung around her neck, Alani’s mom seems like the empty camera—no film inside to register the reality of Alani’s visit.
Told as flow-of-consciousness narration, Alani’s story reverberates between the present and the past. Scenes bounce between Hamburg, Minneapolis and Winnipeg. The characters of significant others from Alani’s life gradually take shape through hir memories. The texture of the novel is the gradual sketching in of relationship details and life events as more memories emerge. Much as images do on a film, the narrative gradually emerges in the developing process.
This is a novel of phrases as much as it is of sentences -- phrases that depict idiosyncratic meanings, meanings that disrupt thought. As a straight cis male reader, one having lived more than a couple of decades longer than our forty-ish Alani, most of the read was one of disorientation, disorientation and impatience that it could not have been told in a more straightforward fashion. Early on, I even questioned whether or not it was readable at all. Gradually though, I was drawn into greater ease with the flow with the narrator’s mind. I came to embrace its challenges and unique style.
I noted rampant anthropomorphism throughout, annoyed by it until a realized that such was just another expression of the non-binary nature of Alani’s consciousness.
This was not a rapid read. This was not an easy read. As a work of fiction, this story took me to another landscape -- an interior one -- vicariously living a different expression of human nature, the different courage of another struggle to be.
Those are non-gender pronouns: hir rather than him or her, ze rather than she or he. Even the two cats in the tale are each individually a they/them/their. Author John Elizabeth Stintzi assists the reader early on in the narrative with the introduction of another character using those pronouns. As the novel is written in the first person but described here in the third, I will use those pronouns for this review.
It is not just the home of hir childhood to which ze returns. Ze submerses hirself in hir memory palace. The memory palace serves as a mnemonic device structuring the last thirty years or so of hir life. It mirrors the physical home Alani shared with hir mother. Much like the way photographs bring into the present a scene of the past, so also the memory palace, triggered by the physical childhood home, brings the events of Alani’s life into hir flow of consciousness. Alani’s has life spanned three different countries. It’s been comprised of times of male, female and non-binary identification.
In her progressive dementia, Alani’s mother has lost the capacity to speak and she is unresponsive to Alani’s presence. Alani’s visits to hir mom in the care home are thus empty of connection. Much like hir mother’s camera, which Alani keeps strung around her neck, Alani’s mom seems like the empty camera—no film inside to register the reality of Alani’s visit.
Told as flow-of-consciousness narration, Alani’s story reverberates between the present and the past. Scenes bounce between Hamburg, Minneapolis and Winnipeg. The characters of significant others from Alani’s life gradually take shape through hir memories. The texture of the novel is the gradual sketching in of relationship details and life events as more memories emerge. Much as images do on a film, the narrative gradually emerges in the developing process.
This is a novel of phrases as much as it is of sentences -- phrases that depict idiosyncratic meanings, meanings that disrupt thought. As a straight cis male reader, one having lived more than a couple of decades longer than our forty-ish Alani, most of the read was one of disorientation, disorientation and impatience that it could not have been told in a more straightforward fashion. Early on, I even questioned whether or not it was readable at all. Gradually though, I was drawn into greater ease with the flow with the narrator’s mind. I came to embrace its challenges and unique style.
I noted rampant anthropomorphism throughout, annoyed by it until a realized that such was just another expression of the non-binary nature of Alani’s consciousness.
This was not a rapid read. This was not an easy read. As a work of fiction, this story took me to another landscape -- an interior one -- vicariously living a different expression of human nature, the different courage of another struggle to be.
TOKARZCUK, Olga.
The Books of Jacob
★★★★☆
Buried in our collective unconscious there must be a yearning for a coming Messiah, a Saviour for our troubled world. Growing up in the Gospel Church, Sunday night sermons often focused on the Second Coming of Jesus. Back 60 years ago it was to be any day now, foretold by the current events on the front pages of the newspaper. I suspect it is still preached the same way now.
This yearning can enthrall us to cult leaders like David Koresh or Jimmy Jones. To authoritarian politicians as well. These figures make the world make sense, simplistic sense, and lift their followers from the trauma and tedium of human existence. They provide something to believe in and dedicate oneself to. These iconic figures form a loyal cadre of ideologues around them, set themselves and their followers against the rest of the world.
Until I read The Books of Jacob I thought that this was something of a 20th or 21st Century phenomenon. Nope.
This Nobel Prize winning novel is historical fiction focusing around just such a figure in the late 18thCentury. Born a Jew, an adopter of the Islamic faith and then baptized as a convert to Christianity, Jacob Franks (the name he ended his life with) saw himself as the third in a series of Messiahs to come to the Jewish people. He got himself quite a following. He rose to consort with high church officials, the rich and the powerful. He indulged himself on the donations of his followers, and sexually with the women in his movement. He was a charismatic teacher with a vision of eternal life based on the proper beliefs he propelled.
In reading the novel, you find yourself both drawn to and repulsed by the man.
Selecting this book, I got myself into more than I had bargained for. It took me months to finish it. Running about 1000 pages, it is constructed as a series of connected vignettes in chronological succession, involving more characters than a reader can be expected to keep straight. Characters even change names as they change their religious affiliations. It’s a lot to keep track of. But then, as a reader, you find yourself carried along by one little curiosity after another. A rich context for the character of Jacob Frank is created around him.
Once you’ve read this book, you are unlikely to forget this story but will see it still arising in newspaper accounts of authoritarian political and religious figures, over and over again. You will hear threads of this story preached from the pulpits. And, you can hope you won’t be drawn in.
This yearning can enthrall us to cult leaders like David Koresh or Jimmy Jones. To authoritarian politicians as well. These figures make the world make sense, simplistic sense, and lift their followers from the trauma and tedium of human existence. They provide something to believe in and dedicate oneself to. These iconic figures form a loyal cadre of ideologues around them, set themselves and their followers against the rest of the world.
Until I read The Books of Jacob I thought that this was something of a 20th or 21st Century phenomenon. Nope.
This Nobel Prize winning novel is historical fiction focusing around just such a figure in the late 18thCentury. Born a Jew, an adopter of the Islamic faith and then baptized as a convert to Christianity, Jacob Franks (the name he ended his life with) saw himself as the third in a series of Messiahs to come to the Jewish people. He got himself quite a following. He rose to consort with high church officials, the rich and the powerful. He indulged himself on the donations of his followers, and sexually with the women in his movement. He was a charismatic teacher with a vision of eternal life based on the proper beliefs he propelled.
In reading the novel, you find yourself both drawn to and repulsed by the man.
Selecting this book, I got myself into more than I had bargained for. It took me months to finish it. Running about 1000 pages, it is constructed as a series of connected vignettes in chronological succession, involving more characters than a reader can be expected to keep straight. Characters even change names as they change their religious affiliations. It’s a lot to keep track of. But then, as a reader, you find yourself carried along by one little curiosity after another. A rich context for the character of Jacob Frank is created around him.
Once you’ve read this book, you are unlikely to forget this story but will see it still arising in newspaper accounts of authoritarian political and religious figures, over and over again. You will hear threads of this story preached from the pulpits. And, you can hope you won’t be drawn in.
WAGAMESE, Richard.
Indian Horse
★★★★★
Indian Horse is an immersive and emotional read.
The story begins in the childhood of Saul Iron Horse and follows him into early adulthood. It is a tragic story although, in the end, it plants a seed of hope. Saul is an Ojibway jerked from the land where he and his ancestors had lived in harmony and respect for the natural world. The account of Saul’s life dramatizes the horror done to Canadian First Nations people through the abuses of the Indian Residential School system and the racist treatment of indigenous people in Canadian society. Also prominent in the story line is the beauty and brutality of the game of hockey.
The strength of this book comes from its evocative descriptive passages. Richard Wagamese passionately takes the reader into the bush of the Canadian north, detailing survival on the land. We canoe the lakes and we set up camp. Through Saul’s childhood experiences we meet a people who have lived with dignity and resilience in the harshest of conditions. We also encounter the spirits of Saul’s ancestors, finding in their appearance his continuity with a resourceful and spiritual people.
Saul tells us his story in the first person, inviting us to experience the reality of it as it happens to him. We emerge not only more knowledgeable of our nation’s history, but wiser and more respectful of the peoples who have truly been of our land.
As a novel, Indian Horse invites us to feel, not just know, the destructive impact of White Canadian culture as it devastated the lives of our First Nations’ peoples through the Indian Residential School system. We see that impact both in the tragic story of its children and in the residuals left within those children as they grew into adulthood.
This book invites us into a much deeper appreciation of this aspect of our nation’s history than we could get from Royal Commission findings and archeological investigations. It provides a felt connection to that history. Such is what a novel does better than can an objective account.
Unlike our neighbours to the south who seek to ban books that make the entitled dominant culture uncomfortable, as Canadians we can elevate this book and others like it for the legitimate discomfort it creates within us. It is a story we need to know, not just learn.